Passive aggression is the modus operandi of the ’90s, a crucial weapon in the contemporary games-playing arsenal. The label “passive-aggressive” is no longer a technical term used by psychiatrists and psychologists alone; it has spilled over into popular parlance as well.
In Woody Allen’s bleak new movie, “Husbands and Wives,” a spurned husband played by Benno Schmidt twice pins the label “passive-aggressive” on his ex-wife, Mia Farrow, because she manipulatively pretends to be more helpless than she actually is. In a charming short story in a recent issue of The New Yorker, the writer Polly Frost describes a typical “P.-A.,” who goes to buy a magazine just as he and his girl friend were supposed to board an airplane for a romantic vacation. Needless to say, the heroine winds up taking the vacation all by herself But it’s not only sophisticated, overly therapized New Yorkers who use the term “passive-aggressive”: a recent “Kudzu” cartoon strip has a child thinking that his mother “has elevated passive aggression to an art form” because she can’t ask him simply and directly to pass the salt.
Passive aggression is a crime of omission. It’s sugarcoated hostility, aggression with an escape clause. It’s when your date promises to meet you at a restaurant at 7:30 p.m.-and shows up at 8:15; when the person you love is angry at you-and won’t tell you why; when people have trouble meeting deadlines at work; when someone’s “inadvertent” barbs hurt your feelings once too often. Passive-aggressive people are invariably an hour late, a dollar short and a block away, armed with an endless list of excuses to deflect responsibility. To make matters worse, they then turn the tables on you, making themselves the hapless victims of your excessive demands and tirades.
In my psychotherapy practice, I hear many patients complain about the passive-aggressive people in their lives, how difficult, frustrating and infuriating they are. Are these complaints warranted? Or has the term “passive-aggressive” lost all meaning, used by those of us who in any situation just didn’t get what they wanted?
Passive aggression does not mean that people are passive one moment and aggressive the next. Rather, it is the (typically futile) attempt by the weak to thwart authority. When someone lacks the confidence to challenge authority directly, their resistance comes out indirectly and covertly. The military and large bureaucracies are breeding grounds for passive aggression, because they offer few avenues for individual self-expression. Civil disobedience and nonviolent protest are examples of healthy passive aggression-the lone Chinese student stalwartly defying a tank moving in on him in Tiananmen Square is a symbol of such defiance. Though we admire it, it was passive aggression nonetheless.
The tragedy of passive aggression in daily life is when passive-aggressive individuals neurotically misconstrue personal relationships as struggles in which they are powerless. Their spouses are transformed into master sergeants, and their bosses into dictators. Feeling angry and resentful, passive-aggressive persons will even go so far as to sabotage themselves to hurt their adversaries. This applies equally to the ruthless middle manager on his way up in a Fortune 500 company; to the adolescent who promised to wash the dishes, saying, “In a minute, Ma” (you find the dishes sitting in the sink an hour later), and to the perpetual adolescent who at the age of 35 is still testing the limits of your patience (as if you were his mother and he were 13).
The economic recession, political cynicism, rampant criminal behavior–these all contribute to a sense of powerlessness. Many of my patients complain that nothing they do seems to make any difference. Social structures no longer protect them. They believe they’re getting a raw deal.
The changing of traditional social and sexual roles, not to mention the dangers and disappointments of sexual liberation, have also confused many. What happens to all this ambivalence, anger and disgruntlement? It comes out as passive aggression.
Conversely, there is a fear of dissent. In conservative times, fear of expressing oneself, whether at work, at home or even artistically, has caused a chilling effect. The answer for many is to suppress their anger, and express it in covert ways. Hence, more passive aggression.
Passive aggression existed long before Colonel Menninger observed it in the soldiers he saw during wartime, and it applies to people in all walks of life. The war stories patients tell me concern those they love and work with. “Passive-aggressive” has become the accusation of the day, and we’ve come to accept it, even find humor in it. Although the syndrome has been labeled, this does not mean that we must tolerate it as a method of relating.
We need to find appropriate and constructive channels for expressing our anger; we need to resolve, not suppress, our interpersonal conflicts. Recognizing and labeling passive aggression is the first step toward dealing with it. Seeing it for what it is–a special kind of hostility-helps us to devise strategies for confronting it. When we fight, let’s fight fairly. When we want something from somebody, let’s be clear about it. Passive aggression rarely works.
